Mbak Rita

Moments like these, with wandering wind and cloudy sky. I am just spending my time looking at the window, waiting for December rain to coldly greet my soul.  I am cheering this day with a sweet lullaby and great wish, ”Have a happy big day today!”. Enjoy!

I swim
With the sharks
Playing in salt water
It’s cold and always dark
I am
All alone
To live life on terms to call my own

One day
I went too far
Swam in shark-finned waters
In their net I was caught
They stared at me so cold
Their lives without meaning
Their minds never grow

You’d say I ran away
While you stayed to play
With facades in shallow graves
This is not my scene
It’s your thing
To be the life of every moment
While I live inside my dreams

Moments like these
Revealing the true me
Moments like these
Seeing so clearly I hide with the ghost
Playing in the darkness
It’s what i love the most
I am all alone
Enjoying the silence
Enjoying my home

You’d say I ran away
While you stayed to play
With facades in shallow graves
This is not my scene
It’s your thing
To be the life of every moment
While I live inside my dreams

Moments like these
Revealing the true me
Moments like these
A side you will never see

Moments like these
Revealing the true me
Moments like these
A side you will never see

(Moments like These, by :  Beauty’s Confusion, 2007)http://www.beautysconfusion.net/sounds.htm

Would it be an assassination too if Benazir binti Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were a man?  I don’t think so. I believed her tragic death has nothing to do with the battle of the sexes anymore because if that was the matter, Benazir should be killed about two decades ago when she won the Pakistani General Election to be its first female President. Although Pakistan’s extremists had publicly admitted they never accepted a female leader, somehow Benazir even made herself the top job twice!

The way that very evil man who killed her—he then bombed himself and others, the innocents, down—was just another proof to me how the former very influenced Asian nation has turned itself into the new jahilliyah state. Just days ago I read a report about the killings in the Pakistani mosque. That gruesome act was aimed to assassin a middle rank politician while the man was still praying his sholat in the crowded mosque. I was so amazed to read that news. I mean, Pakistan is the third most populous Muslim country after Indonesia and India, which capital is named Islamabad, but you can’t even take a peace, especially for doing your sholat, in its mosques? Ahhhh…, something very wrong must have happened there. Something that Brave Benazir would like to heal.

I knew very little about her but I think her decision to come home, leaving the comfort of rich and glittering Dubai shelter to take her chances which she must be known for sure, were very risky, is something to be admired. It took courage, and only special people, the bravest, could do it.

My deeply condolences…May you rest in peace, Miss Benazir.

My sister called with a shaky voice, “The rain is still pouring. Part of the town has been sunk, I am scared, Mbak”. She and her tiny families live in Solo, the home of the famous Bengawan Solo river. One of Bengawan’s rivulet lies about three kilometers from her place. I ran to TV for some more information, although I am used to complain with how unprofessional the TV reportage is lately but still it’s one of the quickest source that I could count on.

Metro TV which claimed as the best news channel was my first choice. Her always gorgeous anchor said about some fatalities, but it was not in Central Java where Solo is located but it was in Makassar where the twister killed and damaged houses. I changed the channel, it was a flood but the caption in it said “Banjir di Bali”. Gee, my most romantic destination, Bali, was damaged too. Kuta beach and Jimbaran were closed by the water! What a horrific disaster, and not to mention that it IS December, the peak season for that resort island. Another sad setback for Balinese.

Another short message from Solo woke me up to change the channel again. Finally I found news from close neighbor, a live report from Tawangmangu, Karanganyar, only one hour driving from Solo. But it was not about the flood in Solo, just another sad story; a landslide that killed about 60 people at dawn….I closed my eyes for a while, God…

Then came the report about flood…from Ngawi, and then.., another big flood in Sragen, Kudus, Grobogan, Madiun, Mojokerto, Bojonegoro, almost all cities in Java has been damaged by the giant flood. And it even ruined further outside Java, there was a big flood too in Padang in West Sumatra and then somewhere in Nusa Tenggara Barat province!

What an annus horribilus for Indonesia, almost all big islands in this country found disasters. I tried to pray a little but my hand still glued to the remote control and my last attempt to find a story about Solo finally got an answer. Trans7 was reporting it. But, what the **@#$! was that? Gee, I really hate that STUPID cameraman and editor of Trans7 who for a while showed a close up shot of an elderly lady’s exposed left tight because she rolled up her long kain-batik/sarong-like dress, to ease her walk against the knee length  flood. Those Trans 7 people should LEARN more about ethic for sure! How dare they treated the flood victim with such an unsympathetic way, by simply showing such picture across the nation! Oooooh what a real bonus for such annus horribilus, year of sorrow, it is!

Hail to the Jakarta Post! I found an article that I need so bad so I don’t have to explain further for Eva, a fried with many questions like a five year old brat,  why as a Muslim I have to join the joy of Christmas. Jesus or Isa Allaihi Salaam (AS) is my prophet too; even he was named ulil azmi or the five ultimate prophets along with Ibrahim AS or Abraham, Musa AS (Moses), Nuh AS (Noah), and Muhammad SAW.   

Celebrating the Maulid Nabi Isa or Christmas should be my party too. So I was always more than happy when the smiling Ibu Siahaan, sent me her famous homemade Christmas cake every December 25. Celebrating the spirit of love is always yummy for me!

Okay, getting serious now, well, after taking a brief moment to contemplate a little, I have to mention Mbak Sima as the living proof of how the spirit of love has been spreading to the world. She is a dear friend for me but also such an inspiration, for always thinks positively, mostly with smile or jokes , and she’s never bothered if sometimes the laugh is in herself.

Even on her most fragile moments, she still managed to come in a point to use it as a weapon to empower others just like what she just did on her personal blog  where she wrote down her battle with cancer. The blog is very informative for others, written in such a great way of writing (yes, she is a writer with capital W!!!). For me, Mbak Sima herself is the translation of such spirit of love. She is the walking Christmas because she always spread the love to humankind. Gee…., God is, indeed, everywhere, right?

It’s been a while I haven’t visited or posted anything here.  Besides simply being lazy (somehow it’s my middlename), losing my small but very own company was the only reason that I could blame for being, ahmm, losing myself a little, including my ability to write. I mean I am a writer but somehow, lately, I felt like no longer finding the chemistry between me and the magic of writing.

Somehow a posting of Mbak Dewi Chandraningrum in one mailing list where I am listed as member was kind of hit me. She said. “Kehilangan satu perempuan yg mau berbicara di ruang publik, ibarat kehilangan seribu pemikir laki-laki (Yeahhh, beat that Homer!! Heh heh heh!!!). Saya sedang tidak mempertentangkan lelaki dan perempuan. Realitas menunjukkan teramat sedikit perempuan yang mau berbicara dengan lantang di ruang publik”.

In short she said that losing a contribution of a female opinion in public is like losing a thousand of male thinkers. I agree with her because she was speaking, mostly, about Indonesian society, where a giant patriarchy megamachine lives peacufully for centuries. Its tentacles sometimes hide in the comfort name of taboos and can’t-be-questioned-dogmas. As Indonesian woman I have to struggle the long and tricky road to find my place in this world, it is like, almost all the time that, I have to prove myself to others that I do deserve having anything that I’ve had. So, yeah, it’s such a really long road and I should join the choo choo locomotive of hope, as much as I could. Hopefully….

Well, I choose today, December 22, 2007 as the day I start writing again. Today is the Woman’s Day in Indonesia (which by the capitalist hijacker has been turning into the more commercial Mother’s Day). In 1928, our very brave grandmothers with their kebayas were united for the First Indonesian Woman Conference in Yogyakarta , declared their support for fighting the independence of Indonesia, which later was finally proclaimed in 1945 as a free independent country. So, Indonesian women were very “kicking” and courageous from the very beginning.

Now, 79 years later, I think it is simply rude for me to just lie down in this harpitnas week holidays, I should do something, or start something good for my community or even nation, maybe even the human race. Well, I think the first step to do such big idea is having a simple way of starting myself to go green. So let me introduce you to my big blue bucket outside my small house during this rainy season. It is my “blue” weapon to go green because the bucket turns into a water pond as it is there to embrace the rainfall. I use the rain water to reduce the consumption of tap water for my plant and bike wash. Yes it is only a small step, indeed, but it makes me happy enough to celebrate Indonesian very own Woman’s Day in a politically correct attitude.

Happy Woman’s Day, everybody!